In partnership with Simply Business
5th in a series of articles exploring how to make 2019 your business’s best year yet.
By Rieva Lesonsky
Whether you’re a startup entrepreneur looking for the newest ideas to start a business or an existing small business owner trying to grow, you need to know about 2019’s hottest industries, ideas, and markets.
Targeting your market
A lot of the trends driving today’s markets are specific to demographics. If you own a business with a physical location—or plan to start one—first make sure your targeted demo lives in the area. You can get that info from the local chamber of commerce or the U.S. Census Bureau.
Weddings
By their sheer numbers and purchasing power, millennials are the demographic almost no business can afford to ignore. Ranging in age from 19 to 37, the 84 million millennials in the United States impact most aspects of American life.
Weddings are already a $72 billion industry, and it’s sure to grow as younger millennials approach the median age of first marriage—29 for women and 31 for men. So many industries, from retailers to restaurant owners to wedding planners, stand to benefit from this wedding boomlet.
Millennial parents
Millennials are today’s parents—51.2% of households with children under age 18 are headed by millennials. Parents are big spenders, spending $1 trillion annually. For the first time in U.S. history, women in their 30s are having more kids than those in their 20s. This is good news for business owners, since parents in their 30s and 40s have more money to spend on food, furniture, clothing, décor, and toys for their kids.
The National Retail Federation (NRF) says subscription services “which offer both convenience and the chance to discover new products and brands are a big draw for these young parents, [who] are about twice as likely to use a subscription service as other generations.” More than one million millennial women become new mothers every year, and since so many millennials are still in their 20s, this is a long-lasting trend.
Nesting
Single millennials, according to the Los Angeles Times, are really into plants, creating opportunities for businesses that sell plants and plant accessories (macramé plant holders are back) or that take care of other people’s plants.
A few years after millennials get married, about a quarter of them buy a new home. While home ownership peaked in 2004, it’s now on the rise thanks to millennial buyers. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, millennial home ownership is up from 34.7% to 36% in the past year.
The good news is that millennials value originality and uniqueness when it comes to houses, and are willing to buy fixer-uppers. Between them and older generations of home owners holding on to their houses, there’s a remodeling boom going on. According to the National Association of Home Builders, the most in-demand remodeling projects are
- bathrooms
- kitchens
- whole houses
- room additions
- window/door replacements
- adding green home features (most common: Low-E windows)
If you’re a painter, interior designer, or own a home store, you know décor matters, too. The colors of the year for 2019 range from the moody blues (Blueprint from Behr and Nightwatch from PPG Paints) to earthy tones (Cavern Clay from Sherwin-Williams and Spice of Life from Dunn-Edwards) to Pantone’s much brighter, energetic Living Coral.